


If You Have to Think Twice

by kho



Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: Drug Use, F/M, Internal Conflict, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Tumblr: Suits100
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-29
Updated: 2017-07-29
Packaged: 2018-12-08 10:19:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11644506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kho/pseuds/kho
Summary: When Rachel's made an offer at Stanford, will Mike go with her?  Set post season 6, no events from 7 taking place yet.“I asked her,” Mike bites out finally, sounding keyed up and nervous and aggravated all at once.  “How is this even a decision.  I’m not leaving.  If I don’t go, we can’t be together.  I don’t even understand why it’s an option, that she’d go without me.  She’s supposed to love me.  We were gonna get married....  And she says to me, why isn’t it a decision for you?”





	If You Have to Think Twice

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to [@accol](http://archiveofourown.org/users/accol) for betaing, soundboarding, and bouncing ideas around with me! All that much better for it!
> 
> BT-Dubyah.... [Kabalarian's Philosophy](https://www.kabalarians.com/) is a real thing and it's kind of scarily on point for most people I check on it. Nicknames and what you go by does make a difference.
> 
>  **Suits 100 Prompt:**  
>  Mike faces a dilemma: either he follows Rachel (they are engaged to be married) to Stanford and the West Coast for at least a few years (an opportunity has opened for her there that she does not want to miss) or he remains in PSL keeping his promise to Harvey to help rebuild the firm. In the process of deciding one way or another he realizes there are other things that keep him bound to the firm and NY  
> Main Pairing / Character Focus: Marvey   
> Prompter’s Note: –

Harvey opens the door to find Mike’s back to him.  For some reason, he seems to be counting the number of doors in the hallway.  “Two, three--”  
  
“Mike?”  
  
“Oh,” Mike says, spinning towards him.  “I thought I might’ve somehow knocked on the wrong door.”  He grins, reaches into his pocket, pulls out a bag and lets it unfurl as he dangles it in front of his face.  “For old times sake?”  
  
Harvey blinks and focuses on the bag, still identifies it as pot, and then reaches out to grab the bag from Mike and crumple it in his hand.  “What the hell, Mike, you can’t just whip that out in the middle of my hallway.”  
  
“So invite me in, Harvey,” Mike says, and then steps past him, laughing.  “Harvey.  Harrr-vey.”  He turns and looks at him.  “Harv.”  He wrinkles his nose in distaste.  “Ok.  That’s just wrong.”  
  
Harvey sighs as he closes the door, turning and following Mike into his den.  “Clearly you’ve already smoked.”  
  
“Oh, I’ve smoked,” Mike says, and then launches himself onto Harvey’s couch, laying down.  He puts his arms behind his head and grins up at the ceiling.  “I have _been_ smoking.  I’ve been high for three days.”  He opens one eye and looks at Harvey.  “Do you know how many bags of cheetos one can consume when they spend every waking hour getting high?  The answer is many, Harvey.  Many.”  He frowns again.  “Harvey.”  
  
Harvey rolls his eyes and walks over to the refrigerator to grab two bottles of water.  “What happened three days ago?”  
  
Mike ignores him.  “What did your Dad call you?”  Swinging his feet up he jerks his body up into a sitting position as Harvey sits down next to him.  “What does your _brother_ call you?”  
  
“Douchenozzle,” Harvey mutters.  “Dickhead.  Asshat.”  
  
Mike snorts.  “That’s your dad or your brother?”  
  
“Marcus.”  
  
Mike grins, big wide and beautiful.   “I really need to meet your brother, Harvey.”  
  
Harvey settles back into the couch, looking Mike over, taking inventory.  Torn jeans, dirty like he’s been wiping his hands on them.  The yellow cheese backs up the cheetos story and makes Harvey think he’s probably not changed pants in three days. The shirt is old and worn and Harvey can barely make out the outline of what used to be the Batman symbol on it.  
  
“Why don’t I grab you some clean clothes to change into,” Harvey says, wrinkling his nose at the idea of cheeto dust on his furniture.  
  
“Your name is weird,” Mike is saying, completely ignoring him and taking the bag of pot out of Harvey’s hand.  “It doesn’t lend itself to nicknames.  Harv doesn’t sound right.  And _Reginald_.”  He smirks, squinting at Harvey.  “Maybe I could call you Naldo.”  
  
“No,” Harvey says, plucking the bag back out of Mike’ fingers.  “What happened, Mike?”  
  
“Cameron Dennis says your name the best,” Mike says, reaching forward to grab one of the bottles of water off the table.  “Have you noticed?  How hard he punches the r’s?”  Mike frowns and points at Harvey.  “Harrrrrr-vey.  It’s almost kind of pirate-y.  Arrrrrrr.”  
  
“It’s the Chicago accent.”  Harvey frowns at him, uncertain whether to be annoyed or concerned.  “Are we seriously going to sit here discussing my name?”  
  
“Michael,” Mike says, blinking and frowning.  “Most people call me Mike, but Trevor, my Grammy… when they were serious, when they wanted to get my attention, when they really _meant_ something it was Michael.  My Dad called me Mikey sometimes.  He had this goofy side, he always knew how to--”   
  
Mike cuts himself off so suddenly Harvey startles with it, looking up from his hands over to Mike’s face to see him closing his eyes and shaking his head.  “Mike?”  
  
“Bad subject, bad headspace,” Mike mutters, shaking his head.  “No.  I wasn’t talking about that.  I was talking about you.  You, Harvey.”  He reaches out and pokes at the bag of pot between Harvey’s fingers.  “You, smoking.  With me.”  
  
Harvey sighs.  The last time Mike started smoking to cope his grandmother had just died and Harvey had let it go on for a week before he had to tell him to straighten his shit up.   “Mike, I’m not sure that’s the best--”  
  
“Idea,” Mike finishes, rolling his eyes.  “Of course it’s not the best idea.  It’s _never_ the best idea, but I’ve had enough morality lectures from Rachel and I’ve had enough goddamn guilt these past few years to last me a lifetime and I went to goddamn fucking _jail_ and smoking pot until my brain shuts the hell up makes me wanna kill myself less, so…”  Mike arches an eyebrow at him.  “Smoke with me.  You know you want to.”  
  
Harvey’s eyes flick down to the bag of green.  “I don’t know.”  
  
Mike grins.  “This isn’t coffee cart guy, this is good shit.  This is Hawaiian shit.”  He laughs.   “I need you to get on my level.  Come be on my level Harvey.  You have too many wits.”  
  
Harvey’s mouth quirks on a grin.  “Wits?”  
  
“Yes,” Mike says, nodding decisively and taking the bag back, reaching into his pocket and taking out a packet of papers to roll a joint.  “We need to have words and I need you to be on my level, and I need you to be honest with me.”  
  
Frowning, Harvey watches Mike begin piling weed into the three papers he’s laid out on his coffee table.  “I’m always honest with you.”  
  
Mike shakes his head.  “No you’re not.”  
  
Harvey tilts his head.  “Excuse me?”  
  
Looking at him Mike’s smile fades slightly.  “You’re not,” he says, shaking his head and shrugging.  “You’re not always honest.”  
  
Harvey feels anger swell in him, and more than a little hurt.  He’s always been open with Mike.  More open than he has been with anyone in a long damn time.  “Again… excuse me?”  
  
Mike sighs.  “You’re not.  Not when you don’t want to hurt my feelings.”  Taking a dollar bill he begins rolling one of the joints in the assembly line.  “Not when you don’t want to worry me.  You lie to me to spare me and I need you to stop doing that.”    
  
Mike pauses to lick the joint closed and Harvey becomes slightly distracted by his tongue.  As he licks it again to ensure it’s sealed Harvey’s eyes follow the path from end to end and he has to  yell at himself in his head to snap out of it and pay attention.  Getting distracted by Mike’s tongue is not the best way to help himself, or Mike.    
  
“So?  I need you to not have your wits about you because you have too many wits.”  Grinning finally Mike begins rolling the second.  “In fact, you have an abundance of wits.”  
  
Harvey brings his hand down on Mike’s arm, wrapping his fingers around his wrist.  “What happened, Mike?”  
  
“Nothing,” Mike says, slumping in the seat.  “Nothing happened, Harvey.  Nothing.  Not a fucking thing.  Nothing’s changed.”  Mike laughs then, nodding slightly.  ”Yet.  She needs… time.”  
  
Harvey keeps his hand on Mike’s arm mostly because it seems to settle Mike.  “Rachel.”  
  
“Time to decide, she says,” Mike says, glaring at a spot outside of the windows. Picking some random star to take all of his wrath.  “And I’m just thinking…  What’s there to decide.  You go, we end.  You don’t, we don’t.  What’s there to decide?”  
  
“Mike.”  
  
“Do you know what Harvey means,” Mike asks, not looking over at him.  “Battle worthy.”    
  
Harvey lets out a breath, frustrated by Mike’s randomness, his concern ratcheting up more and more as the moments tick by.  “Mike.”  
  
“That’s some astute naming there, your parents did, because… You are,” Mike says, nodding and looking down at his nails, picking at the edge of his left index finger.  “Because it doesn’t just mean confrontational, which is what people think if they don’t delve into it, but what it really means is worthy.  That you are a worthy opponent.  A righteous warrior.”  
  
“Why did you--”  
  
“Rachel’s a little more obscure, I had to dig because what I first pulled up was ‘wife of Jacob’ and…. Well that doesn’t mean anything,” Mike continues, bulldozing past Harvey’s burgeoning question.  “And what I came to eventually, was sheeps friend.  Which also sounds meaningless, but what it boils down to is loyalty.  Diplomacy.  A deep urge to understanding everyones hearts and wishes and desires, and that’s just.  Servitude.  Doing good.  The greater cause.  That’s so her.”  
  
Harvey settles back in the couch and resigns himself to a confusing, winding type of conversation tonight.  “Okay.”  
  
“But you see, to get there I had to look up the philosophy of names, it’s called Kabalarian Philosophy.  And it’s not just about what a name means, but what having a certain name means about you as a person.  I don’t know if it’s saying that you become your name, or your name becomes you, but…  Rachel’s fits.”  He looks at Harvey finally.  “Rachel’s fits her perfectly.  My Grammy’s fit.”  
  
Harvey finds Mike’s arm again, giving it a squeeze.  He’s still not really sure what’s happening here, but if Mike’s bringing Edith into it, he knows it’s most likely not going to end well.    
  
“Do you know what Mike means?  Or, really, Michael.”  Mike laughs, picking up one of the joints, holding it to his mouth.  “It’s from the bible.  It means, ‘who is like God’.  He’s an archangel and he’s the leader of heaven’s armies in the war against Satan, so.”    
  
“Okay?”  
  
Mike snorts.  “So.  No pressure.”  Lighting the joint he inhales and closes his eyes, coughing as he exhales a moment later.  Clearing his throat, he continues.  “But when you get to the philosophy thing, that’s where it really sticks, Harvey.  That’s where…”  
  
“Mike, this is meaningless,” Harvey says quietly.  “This is… it’s interesting, and there may be coincidental likenesses, but this is the same thing as zodiacs and--”  
  
“Your name of Harvey creates a quick, clever mind capable of grasping and assimilating new ideas,” Mike says, and the way he says it, the monotone in which he says it, Harvey knows that he’s quoting verbatim.  “You have little patience with those whose mental processes are somewhat slower.  Your feelings are very easily hurt--”  
  
“See?  Untrue,” Harvey interrupts, but Mike is not deterred.   
  
“-- and to protect yourself you withdraw within the realms of your own private thoughts and shut out the rest of the world.  Negative moods, which are your worst enemy, result.  Your sensitivity and lack of verbal expression frustrate and limit the satisfaction in life to be gained.”  
  
It’s a little too close to the mark is the thing, but he’d always let Mike in more than nearly everyone else.  “Mike.”  
  
“Louis,” Mike says, taking another, deeper inhale.  He begins listing characteristics, ticking off from his fingers now.  “Becomes involved in fussy little details at the cost of the greater picture, does not believe in frivolous spending, once the mind is made up it is difficult to be changed.”  
  
Harvey frowns.  “Okay.  Alright, Mike, listen, admittedly, it’s somewhat on point, but--”  
  
“The name Mike, always having new ideas but too often they are for an easy way out of a difficulty.  Not inclined to apply yourself consistently to a job and reach the fulfilment of your goals through perseverance and hard work.”  
  
“Bullshit,” Harvey interrupts.  “You worked your _ass_ off for me.”  
  
“For _you_ ,” Mike counters.  “Because you made me.  And you made me _want_ to.  Before you, I never once applied myself after I got kicked out of college.  And honestly, I never applied myself in college either, Harvey, or even in highschool.  This mind?  I never _had_ to.  Everything…” He shrugs, shaking his head.  “... just came to me.  I didn’t have to try.  It’s right, I’m lazy, I take situations for granted, I take the easy way out.”  He looks at Harvey.  “I didn’t earn that job, I fucking conned you into it.”  
  
“You did not con me,” Harvey bites out.  “You have only ever been honest with me.”  
  
Mike sighs and sinks back again into the cushions of the couch as he takes a third, slow puff from the joint.  “Harvey.”  
  
“No, Mike, listen to me,” Harvey says, sweeping his hand out in the air.  “This?  Is horse shit.  This is bullshit.  You’re what, saying you’re locked into your place in life because it was your given name? What is this?”  
  
Mike rolls his eyes up and looks at the ceiling and Harvey realizes with a gutpunch that he’s got tears in his eyes.  “I’m saying we don’t fit, Harvey,” Mike says.  “Me and Rachel.  Me and you.  I’ve been playing at this life I was never meant to have and stacking the chips and the card house fell fucking down, and now.  Now I’m a lawyer and I don’t even…” He waves his hand around.  “I still can’t even comprehend how that happened, what I did to even deserve that, but I can’t help but think that the card house is gonna fucking fall down again and one day you guys are gonna realize I was never really on your level to begin with.”  He takes a breath and it breaks in the middle and Harvey squeezes his fingers around Mike’s hand and intertwines their fingers together because he just needs Mike to know he’s there.  “You’re gonna see that I was never the champagne and filet mignon.  I’m the hotdogs cut up in my spaghetti, grilled cheese, hamburgers without the bun because we couldn’t afford buns that week, shitty one ply toilet paper guy.  
  
Harvey closes his eyes.  “Mike.”  
  
“I am, Harvey.  I…”  He looks around and lowers his voice, like there’s somehow someone else that would overhear. “I fucking _hate_ sushi.”  
  
Harvey laughs.  “Mike.  Do you think I was born in $5000 suits?”  
  
Mike smirks at him, looking him up and down.  “Frankly?  Yeah, sometimes, I do.”  
  
Harvey shakes his head.  “I grew up on the same shit you did, Mike.  Hell, half the time I grab a hotdog from a street vendor--”  
  
“Food truck,” Mike interjects.  
  
Harvey grits his teeth.  “Street vendor, okay, it’s supposed to be from a street vendor, just because they dressed it up fancy as a food truck it’s still a fucking street vendor at its core!”  
  
“Exactly,” Mike says, sitting up straighter.  “I’m a street vendor and I’ve been dressing fancy like a food truck and one day the paint’s gonna chip just enough to remind you.”  
  
“Okay fine,” Harvey says, meeting his eyes and nodding. “I’ll grant you the premise.  But can we get real honest here?”  At Mike’s nod, Harvey wrinkles his nose. “Are we really saying food trucks are actually _fancy_?”  
  
Mike laughs despite himself, which is exactly what Harvey had been going for.  “Okay, fine.  But the point remains.  I’m meatloaf, and you’re Jean-Georges.  I’m Chinese buffet and Rachel’s sushi.    And I just can’t help but think one day the shine’s gonna wear thin and then I’m gonna be alone, Harvey.  I’m gonna be right back where I was except Grammy’s dead and Trevor is… God, Trevor is--”  
  
“A piece of shit,” Harvey says bitterly, intercepting the path of Mike bringing the joint to his mouth yet again, plucking it out of his fingers and taking a hit himself.  “Trevor was a piece of shit.”  
  
Mike snorts and looks at him, squeezing his hand.  “Thanks, but you know what?  He was my best friend for over 20 years so him being a piece of shit actually says a lot more about me than it ever did about him.”  
  
Harvey frowns.  “What?  Mike, we all have friendships in our youth that--”  
  
Mike ignores him.  “I’m not the guy that lives in the highrise, with the gorgeous fiance and the six digit salary and the wine and cheese Thursdays.  I’m not the guy who is such good friends with the best closer in New York that he’s willing to throw my wedding in his _personal home_.  I’m not this guy, Harvey, I’m not him, I was never him, I was playing at him, I _wanted_ to be him.”  Pausing he looks down at the joint in his hand and takes another slow, long drag.  “I’m the guy getting high on a Tuesday at seven at night.  I’m the guy who rides around town delivering packages because bike messenger companies don’t run drugscreens because if they did they wouldn’t find _anyone_ to cart their shit around.  I’m the guy who always beats the house at cards because I count them in my head, I don’t even try to, I didn’t even mean to, it just _happens_ , and I’m the guy whose best friends with a douche who sells pot to pothead fratboys and fucks me over in court and sends me to jail.”  
  
Harvey reaches over and plucks the joint out of Mike’s hand, brings it to his own mouth to buy a second to figure out whatever the hell it is that Mike needs him to say.  “Maybe you’re both guys.  Maybe it’s okay to be both.”  Staring down at the joint he says the only thing that matters to him.  “Maybe you’re neither, all I know is you’re you.  That’s all you ever need to be.”  
  
“I’m the guy who fucking misses him, Harvey,” Mike says softly, quietly, barely audible.  Not looking at or even near Harvey.  “He was my best friend my entire fucking life.  He’s the only person alive besides me that knew my parents.  He knows _all_ of my shit, and he never judged me for it.”  
  
“No.  He just told it to a court of law to save his own skin,” Harvey says, but he says it gently.  “He’s not worth your missing him.”  
  
“And yet I do,” Mike says, finally looking at him.  “What does that say about who I am, Harvey?  Does that sound like the hot shot young eidetic memory having guy you want by your side as your partner, or does that sound like a goddamn loser who belongs right there in the gutter with Trevor?”  
  
Harvey takes another drag and then passes it back to Mike, who only just seems to have realized Harvey was participating on the smoking portion of the evening.  “You know what, Mike?  Fine.  You wanna have a pity party, I’ve got the time.  If that’s what you need, if that’s what it takes to make you realize that whatever it is you’re feeling right now, worthless or less than or like a piece of shit, that all that’s bullshit--  then so be it.  We’ll throw you a pity party.  I’ll break out the Celine Dion and cheesecake and we’ll hunker down and have ourselves a good cry.”  
  
Mike snorts, and Harvey’s gratified to see a spark of something in his eyes.  Even just a spark is something.  “I do love All By Myself.”  
  
Harvey smirks.  “Always knew you were Canadian at heart.”  
  
“She got an offer from Stanford,” Mike says quietly, fingers brushing Harvey’s as he takes the joint back, frowning down at it as it ashes itself on his shirt.  “Two weeks ago.  They have a program, Stanford does, the Three Strikes Project.   Apparently her work with Jessica on the Innocence project put her on their radar.  She didn’t tell me until--”  
  
“Three days ago,” Harvey finishes, swallowing even as panic begins to inch its way across his skin.  He finds himself reaching out to grab Mike’s wrist again and he’s not even sure if it’s to comfort Mike or himself.  To reassure himself that Mike’s here, now.  “When?”  
  
Mike takes two deep tokes on his joint and then drops it in what’s left of his Whiskey.  “What does it matter what time she told me--”  
  
“Does she have to decide by,” Harvey clarifies impatiently, feeling like the walls are closing in on him just slightly.   He’s thinking smoking weed possibly wasn’t a great idea on a night like tonight.  He’s cold and hot at the same time and his stomach is twisting.    “When does she have to tell them?”  
  
“End of the month,” Mike says, closing his eyes and laying his head against the back of the couch, apparently unaware of Harvey’s arrhythmically beating heartbeat.  “They gave her twenty days and she spent fourteen of them sitting on it practicing some bullshit speech on how she was going to tell me.”  
  
Harvey reaches over then to pluck up his whiskey.  He ignores the way his hands shake and is glad that Mike doesn’t even open his eyes to see it.  “So…”  
  
“I’m not going,” Mike says before Harvey even finishes making up his mind on what question he wants to ask.  “She thought that’s what was happening. That she was convincing me to go with her.  She had a speech.  It had bullet points, I could hear…”  Mike laughs, finally opening his eyes to meet Harvey’s.  “I could actually _hear_ the bullet points happening in her head.”  
  
Harvey swallows and nods, refuses to speak yet as he takes another swallow of the harsh liquid.  “Mm.”  
  
“Like I didn’t just get out of jail,” Mike says, ticking things off his fingers.  “Like I didn’t just get out of _jail_ and _still get into the bar_.  Like I don’t have a life here.  Like I can just up and leave, just…  just leave New York.  All the, the, the memories, and the growing up I did around here, and running around with Trevor, and… and my childhood, my parents, my grammy, these are…. These are my _roots_ and, I can’t just.  It didn’t even.”  He shakes his head and blinks over at Harvey, like somehow he’d maybe even almost forgotten he was in the room.  “She had this whole plan as to how I’d pass the bar there, and we’d live there, and she’s got family there, and it didn’t even dawn on her that this would be a problem for me.”  
  
“If she took fourteen days to prepare a speech, it dawned on her,” Harvey says finally.  
  
Mike only shakes his head.  “Like I would ever just up and leave New York.”  He reaches over and plucks the second joint off of the table.  “Like I would ever leave _you_.”  
  
Harvey feels like like a hit to his windpipe, some kind of physical blow.  “Me,” he says, meeting Mike’s eyes as Mike finally, slowly, looks back at him.    
  
Mike opens his mouth to speak and Harvey can’t breathe for a moment.  Mike’s mouth shuts without uttering a word.  Instead he lights the second joint and takes the deepest inhale Harvey’s seen him take yet.  
  
“Mike?”  
  
“I’m getting there,” Mike says, closing his eyes as he takes another too deep suck on the joint.  “Just hold on, I gotta get there.”  
  
Harvey swallows and watches the way Mike breathes the smoke out of his mouth and then into his nose.  Mike’s emotions have changed a lot this evening, confused to happy to frustrated, back to jubilation and finally a quiet sadness, but now he seems nervous and Harvey doesn’t know what the hell to do with it.  
  
“Getting where?”  
  
“Where I’m…  I’m getting there, Harvey,” Mike says, swiping a hand through the air and then belatedly realizing that he hasn’t offered the joint to Harvey since lighting it.  Harvey declines it.  “Just. Patience.  I didn’t have fourteen days to plan this.”  
  
Harvey watches as Mike’s leg bounces up and down, the hard straight line of his back.  “You know, you don’t have to tell me.  We can just sit here.”  
  
“I asked her,” Mike bites out finally, sounding keyed up and nervous and aggravated all at once.  “How is this even a decision.  I’m not leaving.  If I don’t go, we can’t be together.  I don’t even understand why it’s an option, that she’d go without me.  She’s supposed to love me.  We were gonna get married.”  
  
Harvey closes his eyes on the past tense and reaches out to put a hand on Mike’s shoulder.  Mike stiffens under his touch momentarily but then relents, relaxes.  Harvey feels Mike melt under his fingertips.    
  
“And she says to me, why _isn’t_ it a decision for you,” Mike says, “And I’m just… what are you even talking about?  And she says to leave with me, to build our lives together over again in California.  Why isn’t there any decision to be made on your part, why is it that it is a given that you will stay here.  Why was there no thought, no hesitation.”  
  
Harvey rubs his thumb over Mike’s shoulder and waits with his heart in his throat for Mike to tell him he’s leaving, again, and this time for good.  That this thing he’s been battling in himself for the past few years is about to come to an end.  Because if Mike moves, there’s no need for Harvey to even decide if it’s worth it to test the waters.  To see if Mike might be interested back.  To feel what it might be like to kiss him.  It should have been a relief in some ways, but Harvey only feels the loss of what could have been.  
  
“The thing is, she’s right.  Why _isn’t_ it?  This is an amazing opportunity for her, who am I to stand in her way, to put my foot down and say no.  No.  If you go we’re done, I’m not going with you.  No hesitation.  Why isn’t it a decision for me.”  Mike reaches up and scrubs at his eyes, shaking his head like he’s trying to clear it.  Considering the second joint is nearly cashed, he may well be trying to do exactly that.  “And I think, who am I, anyway?   And who is she, who are _we_ , together, and what if the us we are together isn’t our true authentic selves. What if the me I am with her is the me she loves, but not the real actual _me_?”  
  
Harvey laughs slightly.  “Wow, you really are high.”  
  
“Oh yes,” Mike says, grinning suddenly and letting out a laugh that’s two parts amused and eight parts unhinged.  Harvey tightens his grip on his shoulder to ground him.  “Believe me, I’m stoned out of my head for a lot of this contemplation, hence obsessively looking up name meanings.  Like some fucking Kabilarian philosophy is going to answer my goddamn romantic troubles, when it hits me.”  
  
Mike reaches over and deposits the spent roach in the scotch along with his first, they float on the surface next to each other.  He bends his head forward and Harvey slides his hand over to clasp the back of Mike’s neck.  “I think maybe you just need some sleep,” he says gently.  “Your mind needs to rest.”  
  
“But I got it, Harvey.  I know why,” Mike says, shifting on the couch to face him, reaching back to take Harvey’s hand off his neck and grasp it between his own.  “It’s not important.  None of that other shit is important.  The streets, the parks, Trevor, Grammy, my parents, they’re memories.  I keep them inside of my heart every day.  I don’t need to see the streets, I can smell them in my head.  None of it means a goddamn thing because I can visit whenever I want to, it’s just a plane ticket, it’s just a car ride.  It’s a weekend.  Hell, it’s me closing my eyes and just fucking reliving it, I remember everything.”  
  
Harvey nods, searching Mike’s eyes for the thing he’s not saying.  “But.”  
  
“But I still can’t stand the idea of going, Harvey,” Mike whispers, eyes glistening slightly with unshed tears.  Harvey reaches up to flick away the errant tear that falls and that’s when Mike continues.  “Because it’s you.  It’s you I can’t leave.”  
  
“Me,” Harvey chokes out.  
  
“Yep,” Mike says, letting go of Harvey’s hand and standing up, starting to pace back and forth.  “You.  Harvey.  Harvey Reginald Specter.”  He pauses and raises a hand, pointing a finger up.  “Reginald, by the way, meaning powerful, wise counsel.”  
  
Harvey blinks.  “Mike, enough with the name meanings.”  
  
“The thing is, she was only surprised that I didn’t realize it before,” Mike says, picking up his glass and walking over to the sink to dump it.  He reaches in and grabs the two remnants of the joints and tosses the in the garbage.  “She says, you’ve been choosing him over me since I met you, and…” Mike laughs, a little manically.  “I have, is the thing.”  
  
Harvey opens his mouth to say something, to object or misdirect or counter in some sort of way, but he can’t because he can’t quite catch his breath.  Mike’s at the wetbar now, pouring himself a fresh Scotch and Harvey wonders idly if he’ll be drinking this one instead of using it as an ashtray.    
  
“I chose you over Trevor.  I chose you over the law.  I chose you over…”  Mike pauses, laughing slightly to himself. “Over Grammy.”  
  
Harvey’s eyes fall shut.  “Mike.”  
  
“And I kept choosing you.  Time after time, when shit came down, I chose you.  When I got the offer from Sidwell, Rachel wanted me to take it but I chose staying with you over her wishes.”  When Harvey opens his eyes Mike is staring at him from across the room, looking confused and bewildered and thrown.  Exactly how Harvey himself felt.  “And when I left, I was choosing you over me, because I couldn’t stand the idea of hurting you.  I was tired of hurting you, putting you in jeopardy, making you go against your principles, making you compromise.”  
  
“Mike,” Harvey breathes.  
  
Mike begins crossing the room towards Harvey.  “And when I stood there in court and watched that asshole throw away his friends to save his ass the only thought in my head was, I can’t let Harvey go down for this.  I can’t let Harvey go to jail for something I did, even if it means Rachel leaves me, hates me, never speaks to me again.  I chose jail with the certainty that you’d be safe rather than waiting on the possibility that it may not work out that way if we took our chances.”  
  
“I never asked for that.  I never, not ever, wanted that.”  
  
“And yet, I did it,” Mike says, crouching in front of Harvey, draining half of his glass in one gulp.  “Because, and here’s the part where you buckle your seatbelt Harvey because I’m coming in hard here, no caution flags or rollcages…  I chose you, I kept choosing you, over and over, because I love you, Harvey.  I love you more.  I love you the most.”  
  
Harvey lets out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding, the fear of this not being what he thinks it is fluttering around in his stomach.  “You.”  
  
Mike nods, keeping eye contact with Harvey.  “I thought I had what I wanted. I thought I couldn’t ever ask for more, that you’d given me everything I could ever want. The job and the money and the clothes and the life, and I was gonna have the wife and maybe the kids and maybe the house and maybe the white picket fence, except.”  Mike laughs, shrugging. “Except when Rachel asked me to choose between all of that in California, or staying with you here…. I chose you.  Again.”  
  
Harvey feels like he’s falling, like he can’t possibly be hearing these words out of Mike’s mouth.  “You can’t… You’re high.”  
  
Mike nods, hands coming up to grab onto Harvey’s knees.  Harvey blinks numbly and wonders where the tumbler of scotch went.  “Some people need liquid courage.  I need smoke.”  
  
Harvey shakes his head, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “You can’t possibly be saying this, I can’t let you say this to me.  You’re high.   _I’m_ high.  I’m imagining this.  This isn’t actually happening.”  
  
“I told you to buckle up, cuz it’s happening,” Mike says gently, hooking his thumbs around the sides of Harvey’s legs and scooting even closer.  “And you’re not that stoned, I’ve seen you stoned and this isn’t it.”  Mike’s grip tightens on Harvey’s leg until Harvey looks at him.  “So it’s done. It’s over.  I can’t unrealize this, can’t… unwake up.  I choose here, with you, even if you don’t feel the same way.  Because I still choose you even if it’s only as friends, even if it’s only as what we are now.  Because it’s more than I’ve ever thought I deserved.”  
  
Harvey shakes his head and opens his mouth to speak again but Mike silences him with a finger over his lips.  
  
“So that’s it. I’m staying.  It’s decided.  Even if this, if me and you, never comes to be, I still choose this,” Mike says, pointing between himself and Harvey.  “But.  I don’t think that’s the case, Harvey.  Know why?”  
  
Harvey shakes his head.  
  
“Because you love me too,” Mike says with certainty.  “And I know that because you keep choosing me too.  Over Jessica.  Over Louis.  Over the firm.  Over Scottie.”  
  
“Everyone ever,” Harvey whispers.  “I will choose you over everyone ever.”  
  
Mike’s grin is brilliant and blinding it it sends Harvey’s heart spinning out into the stratosphere.  “See?  I know things.”  
  
“You know me.”  
  
Mike nods.  “I do.”  
  
“You deserve so much more than you think you do, Mike,” Harvey says, reaching out and touching the side of Mike’s face, thumb rubbing over his cheek.  “It’s me that doesn’t deserve you.  I’m a mess.  I’m a trainwreck.  I’m damaged.”  
  
Mike frowns slightly.  “I’m sorry, didn’t we just clarify that I know you?  Because… this is something I already know about you.”  
  
Harvey huffs out a laugh and rolls his eyes, pulling Mike’s face closer and whispering “you little shit” as he presses his lips to Mike’s.  Mike tastes like pot, cheetos, and maybe a little bit of pizza, but he also tastes like everything Harvey’s been wanting for he can’t even begin to tell how long.    
  
They smile lazily at each other when they pull apart, and Harvey reaches over to wipe away the remnants of spit he’d left on the side of Mike’s lips.  His smile grows as he realizes that in doing so, he’s only succeeded in making himself want to put it right back.  
  
“You know what, you’re right,” Mike says, breaking the silence and pulling back. He frowns and holds up his hands.  “That really didn’t work for me.  I was completely wrong on that, that’s my bad.”  
  
Harvey wants to play into it, pretend to be pissed, or even nonchalant, but he’s just high enough to not be able, instead laughing long enough and loud enough for Mike to join in.  He laughs until Mike kisses him again, swooping in fast and unexpected, and then crawling into Harvey’s lap, leaning him back against the couch and kneeling on top of him.  
  
“I swear to God if there’s orange shit on this couch tomorrow,” Harvey mumbles against his lips.  
  
Mike leans back and grins cockily down at him.  “You’ll get over it.”  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

>  **Note on Title:** There's a quote I love, and I cannot find the source, but it's "Never choose someone who needs to think twice about choosing you." And that's what this story is, or, really, it's about if Mike has to think twice about choosing Rachel, isn't that already the answer?
> 
>  
> 
> You can find me on tumblr here under [@lovethesnark](http://lovethesnark.tumblr.com). 
> 
> Fanfiction Website  
> MOST of my fic is not on AO3, though all of my H5O and beyond is as AO3 didn't exist yet and it was too much to archive. It can be found on my website at [LoveTheSnark.com](http://www.lovethesnark.com).


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